The present invention generally relates to cleaning devices and more particularly to a cleaning device for cleaning inner and outer surfaces of a container such as a glass by a single cleaning step.
Conventionally, a container such as a glass is cleaned by human hand. The container is held by one hand of a person doing the cleaning, and inner and outer surfaces of the container are cleaned by a cleaning body such as a sponge cleaner held by another hand of the person. In such a cleaning procedure, one has to clean the container twice, by cleaning the inner surface and the outer surface separately. Thus, such a manual cleaning procedure is inefficient and could cause a problem in restaurants and the like where a large number of containers have to be cleaned in a short period of time. Further, fragile containers such as a glass are sometimes chipped or cracked and this could cause a deep cut in the hand of the person doing the cleaning. Therefore, the person doing the cleaning has to concentrate for long periods of time to ensure such accidents to not occur. This also leads to the reduction in the efficiency of the cleaning work. Furthermore, in such a manual cleaning procedure, the bottom of the container tends not to be satisfactorily cleaned particularly when the container to be cleaned is a deep one.
In order to solve such a problem, a dish washing machine is sometimes used. However, a container, particularly a glass, cleaned by such a dish washing machine tend to show spots of detergent on the surface of the container when the container is dried. Thus, it becomes necessary to polish the surface of the glass by a dried cloth or the like to remove such spots. This polishing operation can only be performed by human hand. Therefore, one cannot avoid the similar problems associated with the cleaning by human hand even if one uses a dish washing machine. Further, the glasses cleaned by the dish washing machine tend to be chipped or cracked due to the vibration of the machine. This increases the risk of the person being injured during the removal of the spots of detergent.
A U-shaped cleaning device for cleaning the container is also known in which a wall of the container is held between a pair of legs of the device arranged in a U-shaped configuration. The container is rotated in this state and the container is cleaned by the cleaning bodies carried by the legs of the device. However, such a U-shaped cleaning device has a problem in that the cleaning of the outer surface of the container becomes incomplete when one rotates the container while pressing the container against one of the legs to clean the inner surface. Similarly, the cleaning of the inner surface becomes incomplete when one rotates the container while pressing the container against another leg to clean the outer surface. Thus, it becomes necessary to clean the inner and outer surfaces of the container in two steps, in which the container is at first rotated while being pressed against one of the legs and then rotated while being pressed against the other leg. This obviously reduces the efficiency of the cleaning. In such a U-shaped cleaning device, there is a further disadvantage in that the container is unstable during its rotation as the container is held between the pair of legs by only one wall portion of the container. In other words, the rotary axis of the container is not stable and one has to rotate the container carefully, particularly in case the container is a fragile glass. Because of these reasons, this U-shaped cleaning device is not commonly used.